The smaller limit hold'em games in online poker rooms these days are becoming quite populated by non-human players. That's right, you might not be playing a human. That knucklehead who bets into you on the river after you raised him on both the flop and turn is probably a software program known as a pokerbot.

Pokerbots are not new, but some of them are improving. Fortunately most of them are not very good and thus are quite easy to beat. However, better ones are evolving all the time. Your best defense is to continue to play at low limits, since the good ones only use them as a testing ground and will move up in limits as soon as they start winning.

The ones that do remain in the low limits simply cannot win at any higher stakes. Many of these are just there to clear the deposit bonus wagering requirements and will be lucky to even show a profit from that. This creates a nice opportunity for a good player.

There are three steps to beating a poker bot: 1. Recognize the bot, 2. Check-raise it often, and 3. Keep raising every round. The biggest flaws in these programs are that they do not take previous round betting action into their decision making process, so you can keep punishing them for extra bets on subsequent rounds when you hold a solid hand. Check-raising them on the flop, turn, and river when you hold top-pair-best-kicker is a very viable strategy.

The bots will make up for some of their flaws by never going on tilt and never clicking the wrong button, but this is not enough for losing all those extra bets by not remembering previous round raises. Another flaw that most of them have is not taking pot odds into account. (As a winning player you need to know your pot odds and apply them correctly to drawing situations.)

If I had it my way, I'd be in a game full of nothing but these low-quality bots, all the time! It's easy money.